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You were told you would be born from a man and that you would love him. You were told you would have a life of pleasure in Eden, helping your husband name all of Creation.
You were told that you would feast in a land of plenty, enjoying all the fruits of God’s labor.
You were told that you and your husband would unite in flesh, reaching levels of ecstasy that the angels would never know. You were told that you would have son after son, daughter after daughter. You were told that your heart would burst with love for them, a kind of love that angels, in their abstract bodies without the bonds of blood, could never experience. You were told that your descendants would remember you, carrying your name through the centuries.
You were told that all the beasts of Eden would befriend you. You were told that an angel would give you a gift at the gates of paradise.
None of this was a lie.
You weren’t told that your time in Eden would be brief. That a beast (or, more accurately, a demon disguised as a beast) would lead you to the last fruit of Eden that you would eat. You weren’t told that when you bit into it, you would see all of humanity, the millennia that your descendants would roam the earth, rising and falling and rising again until all was engulfed in flames. You weren’t told how good your descendants could truly be, nor how evil. You weren’t told that this knowledge would make God cast you out, your lifespan reduced from eternity to decades. You weren’t told the body you were given would wither with age until it failed, returning you to the angels.
You weren’t told that the angel’s gift would feel like salt in the wound, even as it kept you and your husband alive. You weren’t told that birthing your sons and daughters would make you scream in agony, a pain even demons could not know. You weren’t told that even after birth tore you apart, you would still long for your husband, that making love was the closest to Eden you’d ever be again. You weren’t told that one son would kill another to earn God’s favor, that you would weep and weep and weep, but no amount of tears would stop the bloodshed. Your sons would fight and your daughters weep, and their sons would fight and their daughters weep, and so it would continue ad nauseam through the centuries.
You weren’t told the reason your children would whisper your name to their own children, a game of blame, an attempt to understand why God lets bad things happen. Eve knew better, and she did it anyway, and now we pay the price.
“But I didn’t know,” you say to the demon who tempted and the angel who aided. They have come to the desert where your soul rests to ask you a favor. They’re making a new universe, doing it all over again. Will you come with them, fill it with people once more?
“Will it be like last time? Or happier? Or more tragic?” you ask, feeling old pains and pleasures all at once.
The angel looks at you, eyes bright blue, clothed in a grey suit. “I don’t know.” You search for any hint of dishonesty in his eyes, any lie of omission, and find none.
You know now. Will you do it again? You look at your husband, reaching for the scar in his rib, the place you formed from in the last world. “I’ll do as you say, my love,” he says.
You nod, looking out to the desert, unsure if this is the last you’ll see of it or if you’ll be back soon enough. You take your husband’s hand, and then the angel’s. The demon grabs his other hand, and soon they lead you into the light.
You wake up in a garden. Who are you?